John Tuohy's In Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener

All New England Books

Hot wieners are firmly planted in
Rhode Island’s culinary psyche. They’re to the Ocean State what cheesesteak is
to Philly, what barbecue is to Kansas City and what street tacos are to Los
Angeles. Everyone has the wienie joint (their words, not ours) they grew up
with, their gold standard against which all others are judged. There’s The
Original New York System on Smith Street in Providence, Olneyville NY System, Sparky’s
Coney Island System in East Providence (now closed), Wein-O-Rama in Cranston,
Rod’s Grille in Warren, New York Lunch in Woonsocket, Sam’s New York System in
North Providence, Snoopy’s Diner in North Kingstown and plenty more scattered
throughout.

We wanted to know who served the
very first hot wiener, so we asked wienie joint owners across the state, and
the answer was always the same: hot wieners started at the Original New York
System (424 Smith Street, Providence. 331-5349). It’s the OG of the wienie.

No matter where you go, getting
them “all the way” is always the same: steamed bun, wienie, mustard, meat
sauce, onion, celery salt. Of course you don’t have to get them all the way,
but what fun is that? That’s like getting a cheesesteak without the cheese: you
just don’t do it. However, what differs joint to joint is the meat sauce, with
each place remaining as true as possible to their original recipe, some over 70
years old.

Iconic Ingredients

There are distinct differences
between hot dogs and hot wieners: hot dogs are typically very processed, with a
hodge podge of different cuts of meat. Hot wieners on the other hand are made
with beef, pork, veal, spices and one preservative. There are two types of hot
wieners that wienie joints use: ones in a natural casing, and ones without.
According to Greg Stevens, the owner of Olneyville NY System(18 Plainfield
Street, Providence. 621-9500, OlneyvilleNewYorkSystem.com) who is directly
related to the family who first served hot wieners in RI, it’s tradition to
serve hot wieners that have a natural casing. The wieners with a casing come as
one long rope, meaning that each wiener must be cut by hand. Most joints get
theirs from either Little Rhody Brand Frankfurts and Wieners (831-0815,
LittleRhodyHotdogs.com), which makes skinless and rope wieners, or from All
American (294-5455, All-American-Foods.com), who carry Marcello’s skinless,
pre-formed wieners.

The consensus on hot wiener buns
is that Homestead Baking Company of East Providence (145 North Broadway,
Rumford. 434-0551, HomesteadBaking.com) bakes the buns that virtually everyone
uses. “We make [the buns] sweeter than the typical hot dog roll,” says
Homestead General Manager TJ Pascalides. “Restaurants are super particular
about how they steam them up. Everyone has a different steamer and everyone
leaves them in for a different amount of time, so we have to use a strong
flour.”

To get an idea of the demand for
the buns, Homestead receives shipments of 200,000 pounds of spring wheat flour
at a time via railway. Three railway cars fit alongside the bakery, where the
flour is then moved to three flour silos. One silo holds 150,000 pounds of
flour, the other two hold 125,000 pounds each. Just as the meat sauce recipes
never change at the restaurants, the bun recipe has also remained the same:
sugar, water, flour and yeast.

As far as the onions sprinkled on
top of the wieners, survey says that white onions are used. Everyone uses
celery salt, although any information about the brand was held close to the
vest. The mustard? Well, it’s not French’s. That’s about all the info the
owners were willing to reveal. Same with the sauce. Everyone is tight lipped
about their secret recipes, but some said that one of the most important
factors in making a perfectly spreadable meat sauce is to use 70/30 ground
beef. Fat is flavor, and no one’s eating a hot wiener for its health benefits.

Who Served them First?

It was in the early 1900s that
Greek immigrants came to New York, passing through Ellis Island and settling in
Brooklyn (most likely in the Coney Island section). As the Greeks moved out of
Brooklyn and across the country, they brought with them and served up a form of
hot dog or hot wiener which they covered in a Coney Island meat sauce.

We caught up with Greg to learn
about his family history, and where the first hot wiener was served. As the
story goes, Augustus Pappas and his son Ernie opened the Original New York
System on Smith Street in Providence in 1927. In the late 1930s, Augustus
Pappas fell ill, so Ernie called on his cousins Anthony and Nicholas
Stavrianakos (Greg’s great grandfather and grandfather, respectively) to help
run the restaurant. In 1933, Greg’s father, Peter, was born in New York where
his name was shortened from Stavrianakos to Stevens. In 1946, Ernie no longer
needed help running the Smith Street location. His son Gus eventually took over
in the ‘60s, running the place until he retired in 2014. Once Gus retired, the
business changed ownership and eventually had its doors closed for ten months.
This past July, restaurateur Taner Zoprak bought the business, and plans to
keep to the original recipes.

Back to Anthony and Nicholas. The
father and son team branched out on their own after leaving the Original New
York System and bought a small restaurant located at 11 Olneyville Square
(where the bar Lonely Street is currently located). The restaurant was located
right next to a taxi stand, which in 1954 was built over into a restaurant (the
current location of Olneyville NY System). Anthony and Nicholas bought that
space in 1964, and have been there ever since. In 1957 Nicholas passed away,
and in 1958, Anthony passed away at age 97, working until his last day. Greg’s
father Peter took over the business in 1958. Greg was born in 1960, and when he
was old enough he worked at Olneyville NY System on weekends and during the
summers. At the ripe age of 15 he knew he was going to join the family
business, and in 1979 he started working full time, side by side with his dad
until the early ‘90s when Peter retired. Greg and his sister Stephanie
Stevens-Turini have operated the restaurant ever since.

More Wienie Joints

The Original New York System and
Olneyville NY System opened their restaurants with the express goal of being
hot wiener joints. Of course there’s plenty else on their menus, but folks
typically go there for the wienies. Other restaurants have followed suit, while
others have simply added hot wieners to their menu to get folks through the
door.

Rod’s Grille in Warren in one of
the restaurants that has had hot wieners on their menu since the day they
opened in 1955. Meghan Rodrigues is the fourth generation to work at Rod’s
Grille and credits her great grandmother with creating the meat sauce they use
until this day. “My dad, grandmother or I make the sauce,” she says. “No one
else knows the recipe. You have to follow every single step of the recipe or
the taste will change.” Unlike the sauce at either the Original New York System
or Olneyville, there is a touch of spice in it, which slowly builds as you eat
it. Meghan also puts less onions on it compared to other places; she doesn’t
want the onions to overpower the secret sauce. The sauce is so popular that
their regulars regularly add it to other menu items, like the burgers.

The Future of Hot Wieners

One thing that rings true at
every hot wiener restaurant is the need to stay true to the ingredients. “We’ve
tried other products and they just don’t taste the same,” says Meghan
Rodrigues. Greg Stevens of Olneyville is of the same mind. “Do not change a
thing. That’s the theory with Olneyville NY System,” he says. “When people come
in and have their hot wiener and coffee milk I’ll ask, ‘does it taste exactly
as you remember?’ If they say yes, that’s the best compliment I can get.
Keeping everything the same… it’s harder than it looks.”

They also have very little to do
with the New York City amusement park

By Erick Trickey

SMITHSONIAN.COM

This July 4, as with every July 4
going back to the 1970s, an all-American display of gluttony will feature
rubber-stomached competitive eaters once again gorging themselves in the
Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Brooklyn’s Coney Island. This year’s
gastronomic battle, at the corner of Surf and Stillwell avenues, will honor the
100th anniversary of the founding of Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs at the same
corner in 1916.

It’s a patriotic event, and not
just because it’ll be echoed at holiday barbecues across the country. The hot
dog, that quintessential American food, has been associated with Coney Island,
America’s most storied amusement resort, since frankfurter first met bun. But
Nathan’s century-old triumph of entrepreneurship is only part of the
Ellis-Island-meets-Coney-Island story. Thanks to immigrants from Northern and
Eastern Europe alike, the name “Coney Island hot dog” means one thing in New
York, another in the Midwest and beyond.

Historians disagree on the hot
dog’s origin story, but many credit Charles Feltman, a Coney Island pie-wagon
vendor, with inventing the fast food, serving hot dachshund sausages in milk
rolls as early as 1867. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Councilsays Feltman
opened a hot dog stand on Coney Island in 1871 and sold 3,684 sausages that
year. Wieners took Feltman far. By the turn of the century, he’d gone upscale,
with Feltman’s German Gardens, a huge complex of restaurants and beer gardens
on Surf Avenue that employed 1,200 waiters. Though seafood became Feltman’s
specialty, he still had seven grills dedicated to hot dogs, which he sold in
the 1910s for ten cents apiece.

Nathan Handwerker, a Polish
immigrant with a day job as a restaurant delivery boy, worked Sunday afternoons
at Feltman’s German Gardens, slicing rolls. According to Handwerker’s 1974 New
York Times obituary, Jimmy Durante and Eddie Cantor, who worked as singing
waiters on Coney Island before they found fame, encouraged Handwerker to strike
out from Feltman’s and sell hot dogs for a nickel instead of a dime. In 1916,
he did just that, opening a small hot-dog stand at Surf and Stillwell with his
wife, Ida. The subway’s extension to Coney Island in 1920 brought countless New
Yorkers to his stand. “Society people, politicians, actors and sportsmen
flocked to Nathan’s,” the obituary recalled, “brushing shoulders with truck
drivers, laborers, and housewives.” Franklin D. Roosevelt famously served
Nathan’s hot dogs at a 1936 lawn party for Britain’s George VI and his wife,
Queen Elizabeth (mother of the now-reigning Queen Elizabeth II).

Meanwhile, outside New York, the
Coney Island name evokes an entirely different hot-dog tradition. In Michigan,
“Coney Island” doesn’t mean an amusement park, but one of an estimated 500
diners in the Metro Detroit area alone
that serve Greek food and “Coney dogs” -- hot dogs smothered in chili or
ground beef, plus mustard and onions. There are plenty more elsewhere in
Michigan, across the Midwest, and beyond.

The Coney dog was spread across
the eastern U.S. by various Greek and Macedonian immigrants in the 1900s and
1910s. The restaurateurs were part of the great wave of Greek migration to the
U.S. – 343,000 people between 1900 and 1919 – who fled the economic desolation
caused by Greece’s 1893 bankruptcy and a crash in the price of currants, then
Greece’s main export. “Many of them passed through New York’s Ellis Island and
heard about or visited Coney Island, later borrowing this name for their hot
dogs, according to one legend,” wrote Katherine Yung and Joe Grimm in their
2012 book Coney Detroit.

In that era, Americans associated
New York’s Coney Island with hot dog authenticity. Back then, the name “hot
dog” was out of favor; amid the concern about meat-packing standards inspired
by Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, it still carried a hint of suggestion that
the cheap sausages were made of dog meat. Handwerker called then “red hots,”
others “Coney Island hots.”

Naming the inventor of the Coney
dog – the first person to slather chili or sprinkle ground beef on a sausage –
is a fool’s errand. Various Coney Island restaurants in Michigan and Indiana
vie for the title, claiming founding dates in the mid-1910s, but they don’t
appear in city directories from the era until the 1920s. Many Greeks and
Macedonians likely hit upon the idea of dressing hot dogs in variations on
saltsa kima, their homeland’s spicy tomato-based meat sauce. “The Coney
Island’s formidable beef topping with a sweet-hot twang has a marked Greek
accent,” wrote Jane and Michael Stern in their 2009 book 500 Things to Eat
Before It’s Too Late.

It’s easy, though, to locate the
Coney dog’s ground zero, the Midwest’s version of Surf and Stillwell: the
corner of West Lafayette Boulevard and Michigan Avenue in Detroit.

There, Lafayette Coney Island and
American Coney Island have carried on a sibling rivalry for 80 years. For
generations of Detroiters, their chili-topped weiners have been the ultimate
urban-diner experience, the workingman’s lunch and the late-night craving after
last call. Brothers William “Bill” Keros and Constantine “Gust” Keros, former
sheepherders from the Greek village of Dara, founded the two diners to serve
hot dogs to autoworkers. Each restaurant boasts it opened first, with American
Coney staking a claim to a 1917 founding, Lafayette Coney to 1914. But city
directories tell a different story than family and business oral history: the
Coney Detroit authors say the brothers opened Lafayette Coney together in 1923,
and Gust Keros opened American Coney in 1936 after a falling-out with his brother.

Outside metropolitan Detroit,
Coney dog variations abound. In Michigan cities such as Flint, Jackson and
Kalamazoo, their topping isn’t chili, but a sauce that’s mostly ground beef,
often including beef hearts. A few Coney Island restaurants still exist outside
Michigan, from the Coney Island Grill in St. Petersburg, Florida, to George’s
Coney Island in Worcester, Massachusetts. Cincinnati’s version of Coney sauce
is a chili, invented in 1922 by Macedonian immigrants Tom and John Kiradjieff
as their own spiced version of saltsa kima. That iteration doesn't just go on
hot dogs-- it's also served with spaghetti or as a stand-alone chili.

Closer to New York City, the
names change. Rhode Islanders call their Greek-immigrant chili-dog diners “New
York System” restaurants, and they serve “hot wieners” – never hot dogs. “They
are made in a systemic way,” wrote the Sterns in 500 Things to Eat, “by lining
up all the dogs in buns and dressing them assembly-line-style.”

But in far
upstate New York, around Plattsburgh, they’re called Michigans, probably thanks
to 1920s Detroit expatriates Eula and Garth Otis. From there, they smuggled
themselves across the Canadian border, where the Montreal-area hot-dog chain
Resto Lafleur offers a steamed or grilled “hot-dog Michigan” and poutine with
“la sauce Michigan.”

Today, Nathan’s is an
international chain, with more than 300 restaurants and stands, mostly on the
East Coast. It’s added a chili dog to its menu. In another example of hazy
hot-dog lore, Nathan’s apocryphally claims it’s about to host its 100th
hot-dog-eating contest – actually a creation of carnival-barker-style bunkum
that started in the 1970s. Meanwhile, Coney Island blogger and historian
Michael Quinn is reviving the Feltman’s red-hots brand, which went extinct with
Feltman’s restaurant in 1954. He’s teamed up with a sausage-maker to make a red
hot in homage to the original, which he’s selling at pop-up events. In a
history-minded revenge, Quinn sells hot dogs for half of Nathan’s price.

The state's cuisine is featured,
from seafood to Italian and Portuguese specialties.

Journal Food Editor

Rhode Island's iconic foods and
its history of ethnic specialties will be celebrated on television Tuesday
night when Andrew Zimmern hosts "Bizarre Foods: Delicious
Destinations" on the Travel Channel at 9 p.m.

Producers for the badly named
show came calling back in September to film hot wieners, coffee milk, quahogs,
jonnycakes, snail salad, chowder, stuffies and salt cod. Though the show's
"Delicious Destination" is billed as Providence, food was featured
from around the state. The show was available for screening by critics.

It's a wonderfully produced
melange of the delicious and the quirky. It begins with a burger at the Haven
Brothers food truck. It includes that famous pizza at Al Forno being made by
chef David Reynoso, the thick ice cream drinks Awful Awfuls from Newport
Creamery, and wieners all the way at Olneyville New York System.

There's a big focus on seafood,
clams on the half shell and other preparations that bring with them flavors
that reflect a sea-to-table cuisine. Hemenway's Seafood Grill & Oyster Bar
plates some lovely clams early on in the hourlong show. Perry Raso makes
stuffies at his Matunuck Oyster Bar in South Kingstown.

Don't watch this show on an empty
stomach, by the way.

Portuguese soul food, salt cod or
bacalhau, is given plenty of screen time, both at O Dinis in East Providence
and at North American Salt and Fresh Fish Corp. in Pawtucket, where fish is
turned into dry, salted cod.

In his commentary, which was
filmed after production in Rhode Island wrapped up, Zimmern talks about how the
state attracted seafaring people from Europe, and with them came many
traditions.

To show one of those traditions,
a production team arrived at O Dinis to film second-generation restaurateur
Natalia Paiva-Neves, who works with her father, Dinis Paiva. Producers had seen
YouTube videos of her cooking and called. Since she's dreamed of stepping up to
the granite counter in a TV kitchen, she was on board.

They filmed her talking about how
cod is soul food here in New England and of the importance of sharing her
Portuguese traditions with her children. Those two passions intersect when she
heads into the kitchen to cook Bacalhau ne Brasa, a taste of Portugal on a
plate, with accompanying boiled potatoes and onion and garlic sautéed in olive
oil.

The visit to the salt cod
production facility is fascinating. It reveals how whole cods caught in cold
sea waters are butterflied before salt is shoveled over them to remove all
liquid and moisture. That's why they have to be de-salted to make cod dishes.

Italian traditions are shared
from Champlin's in Galilee, where they make a scungilli, or snail, salad.

Native Americans are credited
with their role in local foods, not just with johnnycakes, which are featured
from Jigger's Diner in East Greenwich, but also for their role in creating
Rhode Island's clear broth chowder. If you didn't know or remember that local
quahogs have purple in the shell, you will now because you'll learn they were
used for wampum due to their color.

Throughout the hour, regular
Rhode Islanders star in "Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations" as
they are interviewed while they sip, slurp and savor all the treasured foods of
their home.

The scene: Coastal New England
is dotted with seafood shacks and eateries of every description, and no visit
is complete without the region's famous fresh lobster, clams and chowder. But while
you can find the staples like lobster rolls and oysters on the half shell
everywhere, there are surprising hyper-local specialties and notable regional
differences between neighboring states separated by just a few miles. Maine is
best known for its lobster, in the shell and in the hot dog bun; Connecticut
created the now-legendarywhite clam pizza; and Massachusetts proudly invented
the fried clam on Boston's North Shore.

But when it comes to
regionalized New England seafood, no state stands alone like Rhode Island,
which has its own unique and eponymous form of clam chowder, claims the stuffed
clam -- or stuffie in Rhody-speak -- as its own invention, uses hot peppers to
spice up Rhode Island-style calamari, and loves clam cakes, largely overlooked
in the rest of the region. These four dishes form the basis of must-try Rhode
Island seafood specialties, and after asking numerous locals where to find the
best, I got little but partisan disagreement.

However, a couple of names kept
coming up, which led me to the Matunuck Oyster Bar, on the southeastern-most
tip of the state near the Connecticut border; the full service Flo's Clam Shack
in Middleton, abutting tourist-mad Newport; and the lesser-known but
atmospheric Flo's Drive-In in Portsmouth. All three are on the southern coast,
and Matunuck is the most full-service restaurant, with indoor dining, table
service and full raw bar, but also ample outdoor seating and full bar
overlooking the surf. It sits right along the road on a narrow spit of land
with water on both sides, and it is so popular that the valet parking lot
stretches down the coastline.

The Newport Flo's looks like a
classic sea captain's house just off ultra-popular Easton's beach, which
connects Newport and Middleton. It has outdoor seating plus indoor dining with
oyster bar and kitschy décor with life vests and fishing rods hanging from the
ceiling. There is almost always a line to get in, from a tiny back parking lot
that usually overflows.

The simplest and easiest to
visit of the three is Flo's Drive-In, a lower-key sibling of Flo's Clam Shack.
A classic coastal joint, it is one simple small building with windows for
ordering and picking up, picnic tables for dining, everything served in
styrofoam clamshell containers, plastic sauce cups and brown paper bags, with a
limited menu and little else - except the feel of New England ocean escapism at
its best. They even hand out lobster-shaped buzzers to let you know when your
food, cooked to order, is ready. Since 1936 this has been the site of the first
Flo's, originally a chicken coop, twice destroyed by hurricanes and last
rebuilt in 1991.

The food: Rhode Island clam
chowder is quite distinct from both of its better known rivals, New England
(white, thick, creamy and potato-laden) and Manhattan (red, thin,
tomato-infused broth). It is the most straightforward take on the genre, clear
broth (usually made with at least some clam juice) with minimal filling of red
skin potato chunks, celery and clams. Some places add a bit of diced bacon. The
emphasis is on the bivalves themselves and while it's thin, between the clams
and clam broth, it packs in briny clam flavor, salty and tasting of the ocean.
It's also one of those things appreciated more if you grew up with it -- if you
like clams, it is worth trying for the novelty, but frankly, it is hard to
imagine loving this soup. Flo's does a thicker style with more potato cut into
bigger cubes, and while still brothy, this thickens it a bit. I preferred the
purity of Matunuck's version more, with its pronounced clam taste, though the
small added pieces of bacon made it even saltier.

Since last year, calamari has
been the official "state appetizer," but not all squid is Rhode
Island-style calamari. In the rest of the country, fried calamari is pretty
consistent, served plain with cocktail sauce on the side. In the Ocean State
they toss it with slices of pickled hot peppers, banana, cherry or pepperoncini
(or a combo), and usually some of the vinegar they came in, sometimes made a
bit creamier with the addition of garlic butter. The bite of the peppers and
the tang of vinegar go perfectly with the oily fried squid, and when this dish
is good, it is great, so much so that you may never want to eat fried calamari
any other way. Matunuck does a fancified version that still focuses on very
tasty and fresh squid, an ample serving tossed with just a few slices of hot
pepper but also with a delicious, fresh and lemony aioli and baby arugula
leaves. The result is still mainly excellent fried squid, but the flavor is
amplified by the acidity of the dressing and nicely offset by the bite of the
peppers and pepperiness of the lettuce. Flo's takes a completely different
approach, serving a basic order of fried calamari with a chopped mix of hot
peppers in a plastic container on the side to serve yourself. No matter how
much I added it didn't integrate well, and for this regional staple, Matunuck won
hands down.

The advantage quickly swung
back to Flo's when it came to clam cakes. These are basically clam-studded
fritters of dough, and like any fritter, the challenge is balancing the taste
of the featured ingredient with the batter. I've had a fair amount of clam
cakes, and most have disappointed, often doughy, oily and tasteless. But not at
Flo's, where I had the best clam cakes of my life, and the single most standout
thing on this coastal trip. They were fresh fried and doughy but light, studded
with some corn kernels as well as clam, which gave them just a bit of sweetness
– like a seafood version of Italian zeppoli or doughnuts. Hot, fluffy and
balanced, I couldn't stop eating them. No wonder both people in line ahead of
me were there just to take out clam cakes, a dozen each – a big order – but
this is what Flo's is justifiably famous for. Their combo meal special is a cup
of R.I. chowder and three clam cakes, a good local sampling.

The only real disappointment of
the trip was the stuffies, I asked my friend Amy, a food-loving Providence
native, where to go and she said simply "My house. You have to make them
yourself. I've never had a good stuffie in a restaurant." The ones at
Matunuck were big and lived up to their name in that they were certainly
stuffed. Each was chock-full of small bread cubes, like bagged Pepperidge Farm
mix for turkey, with far too much breading for the clam. The ones served at
Flo's looked more promising and homey, with two assembled into a sort of closed
clam held together with a rubber band. But inside was a stuffing paste, a
smooth amalgam of breading and barely discernible clam meat, with no chunks.
Because they had some bits of jalapeño and nice spices, the stuffing was
actually quite flavorful, but not clam-flavored, and the consistency of mashed
potatoes.

Flo's is well worth a visit for
its signature clam cakes, and I'd definitely go back to Matunuck for its very
fresh take on the state's unique calamari (while I was exploring these four
local specialties, Matunuck Oyster Bar is also acclaimed for its oysters, and
operates its own 7-acre aquaculture oyster farm in nearby Potter Pond, as well
as its own vegetable farm supplying the delicious baby arugula).

Pilgrimage-worthy?: Yes,
collectively because these unique Rhode Island specialties are just hard to
find anyplace else.

Larry Olmsted has been writing
about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has
attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined
with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a
unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail
attravel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided
complimentary services.

In his second attempt to be
honored as Man of the Year by raising funds for the Leukemia & Lymphoma
Society of Rhode Island, Ace Aceto – with organizational help from comedian
Mike Murray – held a hot weiner eating contest at Olneyville New York System on
Reservoir Avenue.

Also a comedian, Aceto has
spent most of his adult life working in the health field in one capacity or
another. He was an EMT for 10 years in North Providence, worked as a pharmacy tech
for CVS and is currently employed by GlaxoSmithKline as a public health
accounts manager in the vaccine division. Last year, he was able to raise
$20,000 in just 10 weeks, and the results of this year’s fundraising
competition will be announced next week.

There were 16 participants in
the hot weiner competition, which was held on April 19. Geoffrey Esper won as
he ate 29-1/2 all-the-way wieners in just 15 minutes.

There were approximately 100
onlookers, including Mayor Allan Fung, a former classmate of Aceto; 15-year-old
Emma Katzen from Barrington, who is the society’s Girl of the Year; and K.J.
Ricci from North Providence, who is Boy of the Year. Both Emma and K.J. are in
remission from leukemia.

If Aceto wins Man of the Year
honors next week, he will let both Emma and K.J. shave his head during the
grand finale on April 25. He has approximately $5,000 more to raise.

All the food at the event was
donated by New York System’s owners, Greg Stevens and Stephanie Stevens-Turini.
There was also musical entertainment, along with face painting for children.

The scene: A true Rhode Island
institution, Olneyville N.Y. System looks like a frozen-in-time urban diner,
which it is, but that is where all similarities to any other eatery end. As you
enter, you pass the sidewalk takeout window, which does a brisk late-night
business, and prominently displayed in the window is the large griddle on which
the hot wieners are cooked. Everything else is, let's just say, window
dressing. Hot wieners, basically miniature frankfurter-like sausages, are the
reason the restaurant exists – and thrives - in its gritty namesake
neighborhood of Olneyville. Inside, a worn counter with pink diner stools runs
the entire length of the left-hand side, with two rows of booths in alternating
pink and beige Formica occupying the rest of the space. Behind the counter, as
in any classic coffee shop or diner, is an array of working equipment like
coffee urns and milkshake mixers, all in plain sight, and running across the
top of this wall are signs for numerous menu choices, from tuna melts to
breakfast sandwiches to salads. But no one comes for any of that – the owner
estimates that 98 out of 100 diners order the same thing: between three and six
wieners, fries and a drink.

One reason all the other items
remain in existence is that the family owners do not like change, which is why
the place looks like it did when it opened in 1946. "People don't know how
hard it is to keep it the same. The biggest compliment we get is 'it's just
like I remember.' Everything is original, even the Formica, and every now and
then we get a Formica nut who comes in and is amazed by it," said third
generation sibling owner, Gregory Stevens. The last time the menu changed was
six years ago, when he begrudgingly added the option of chili cheese fries –
hardly a revolution since chili and fries were already popular here, and
regulars kept asking for the combo. "I don't get it, I'm old school, but
kids today love chili cheese fries," says Stevens.

The bigger change is its
newfound even greater popularity, especially after multiple TV appearances with
food personalities like Guy Fieri, Andrew Zimmern and Adam Richman. Two years
ago it also became the only miniature sausage specialist to ever win a
prestigious James Beard Award, as an American Classic. The medal is subtly
displayed on the wall in back, and the boosted profile means that in addition
to the eclectic mix of locals, college students, workers, police and late-night
bar patrons, you now add tourists. Truly everyone comes here, which is why from
about midnight to closing at three, the line wraps around the comer. While
there is an ordering lingo for regulars such as "five, light on
onions," staff is friendly, explanatory and it's not the kind of
intimidating place where you are rushed and expected to know the slang. There
are two additional satellite locations, both long established and just three
and five miles away.

The food: There is much
argument about the origin of the term "New York System," but like
Detroit's famed "Coney" joints, it seems connected to a perceived
association between the Big Apple and hot dogs. A surprising number of Rhode Island
eateries have the term in their name, of which Olneyville is by far the most
famous. Smith Street New York System dates to 1927, and one of the sets of
cousins who ran it launched Olneyville almost twenty years later. Whatever the
origin, in the Ocean State the term refers to places serving small sausages,
aka hot wieners. They are similar to hot dogs, but one of the two cardinal
rules at Olneyville is to never call them hot dogs (the other is to never, ever
put ketchup on them). They are small, but not as tiny as the mini-dogs popular
in New York's capital region and Cincinnati, both of which have been profiled
in this column. About 3/4 the size of a conventional frank, they are a blend of
veal and pork, all meat with no fillers, a custom recipe made at a local meat
plant. They are served on an appropriately scaled New England-style hot dog
bun, which is to say, slit rather than hinged, with flat, exposed soft white
bread sides, instead of rounded brown crust exterior. The buns are steamed and
a wiener "all the way" has celery salt, mustard, chopped onions and
wiener sauce, which is what they call chili.

The already-smoked sausages are
placed on the grill in the window, which has a dip in the middle where oil
collects, and they are cooked in this "puddle." When you order, the
counter man lines up buns on his forearm and places the links in them with
tongs, then tops them, and this is a big part of the Olneyville show and
tradition: longtime staffers can do up to fifty – five layered rows of ten
wieners – on one arm before turning to the counter to dispense them.

The hot wieners are skinless
and have a crisp snappiness to their fried exterior, with a more meaty and
nuanced sausage flavor than the typical hot dog. The chili is thick and pasty,
almost a spread, all meat and spice and no liquid, and it is good but not very
strong. Like the rest of the complementary toppings, none overpowers the others
or the main event, the wiener. These are quite good, and every patron has their
personal preference on the topping choices. They are almost always accompanied
by french fries, which are standard but done well, fried frequently and served
hot, oily and satisfying. The third component of the standard meal is Rhode
Island's signature beverage, coffee milk, an oddly addictive mix of milk and
sweetened coffee syrup, sort of the coffee version of chocolate milk. It is so
wildly popular in the Ocean State that children get the option of it in school
cafeteria lunches instead of regular milk. It's milder than an iced coffee and
delicious, even if you don't like coffee. You can also think of it as your
dessert, since this is something Olneyville N.Y. System does not, and likely
never will, serve.

The restaurant captures a
unique sense of place like few others and is a must if you visit Providence. I
loved the food, but it is made even better by its history, oddity and beloved
authenticity.

What regulars say: "Four
all the way, fries, coffee milk." The person in front of me said this. So
did the person behind me.

Pilgrimage-worthy?: Not quite,
but close, special food in a special place and must for those near Providence.

Larry Olmsted has been writing
about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has
attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined
with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a
unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail at
travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided
complimentary services.

Foodies in Los Angeles are flocking to a restaurant named
after Rhode Island’s capital city.

The restaurant Providence has received two stars from the
Michelin Guide. Rhode Island Public Radio’s Elisabeth Harrison spoke with Head
Chef Michael Cimarusti

efore he opened a top-rated restaurant in Los Angeles, Chef
Michael Cimarusti grew up spending vacations with his grandparents in Rhode
Island.

He remembers summers on Scarborough Beach, where the clam
cakes were to die for.

"There used to be a shack literally, like, right in the
middle of Scarborough Beach," Cimarusti reminisced. "We’d spend all
day on the beach and around noon or one o’clock my mother or my grandfather
would give us 10 bucks, and we’d go get a dozen or a half dozen, and those are
some of my earliest and fondest food memories."

Cimarusti says fishing with his grandfather was another inspiration
for his restaurant Providence, which focuses on seafood.

He uses razor clams for his version of clam cakes, and a
recipe from his grandmother's kitchen.

"I have a handwritten copy of her recipe, and that’s
something that’s been on our menu since we opened just because, God, I love
clam cakes when they’re done right."

Providence features multi-course tasting menus and dinners
that can last several hours. But for simpler fare, Cimarusti has also opened
Connie and Ted’s, a restaurant named in honor of his grandparents .

The menu includes Rhode Island specialties like fried clams
and stuffies.

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The hot wiener or New York System wiener

The hot wiener or New York System wiener is a staple of the food culture of Rhode Island. It is typically made from a small, thin frankfurter made of veal and pork, thus giving it a different taste from a traditional hot dog made of beef. Once placed in a steamed bun, the wiener is topped with a meat sauce seasoned with a myriad of spices like cumin, paprika, chili powder and allspice, which is itself covered in finely chopped onions, celery salt and yellow mustard.

Wiener Sites...there just wasn't any other name that fit

The term New York System

The term New York System originated in the early 1900s, when hot dogs began appearing in Rhode Island but were still associated primarily with New York. Although now referred to exclusively as wieners, "New York System" is still used to advertise the distinct style of preparation refined by Providence's Greek immigrant community in the 1940s.

The traditional New York System preparation

The traditional New York System preparation has the cook balancing as many as dozens of buns along his forearm and applying the toppings with his free hand, a method called "up the arm." Because of their size, patrons will often order three or four wieners at once. Wieners with all of the standard toppings are ordered "all the way."

The Olneyville New York System

Olneyville New York System, in Providence's Olneyville neighborhood, is often cited as the "definitive" or "quintessential" vendor and dates to its opening by Greek immigrant Anthony Stevens in 1946. Stevens' cousin Gust Pappas ran Original New York System in the Smith Hill neighborhood, which claims its own founding as 1927. Still another institution, Coney Island System, claims an earlier date of 1915. There are dozens of establishments across the state that offer wieners, and the question of which is "best" is often contentious among residents

Del's Lemonade

If you are looking for a place to go for a nice cool non alcoholic drink, then Del's serves frozen lemonades. Reason enough to make it to our top restaurant list. These can be found all over Rhode Island, and they are sold at stands and at corner shops through out town. The best way to drink it is straight from the cup, while the ice slowly melts away. What more can you ask on sweaty hot summer days.

powwow \POU-wou\, verb:. To confer. . A ceremony, esp. one accompanied by magic, feasting, and dancing, performed for the cure of disease, success in a hunt, etc.. A council or conference of or with Native Americans. Powwow derives from the Narragansett tribal word for a spiritual leader who receives guidance from dreams.

Modern Diner

Modern Diner: The first ever diner was invented in 1872 in Providence by an entrepreneur, Walter Scott. He decided to serve food from a freight wagon, which was horse-drawn. The diner's mobility lead to it being a great hit. Scott, soon had a roaring business, because he was moving his shop to where ever the people needed food. The meals served in diners are simple and hearty. The Modern Diner, at 13 Dexter Street, in Pawtucket is one such place, and it has made it to our list of top restaurants in Providence, by the sheer taste of the historic food served.